answering Terrance

[Doug Millison]

Terrance: "Also, Crownshaw doesn't make the same case you
seem to be making here. Does he?  Also, why is the issue of how an 
artists might "legitimately appropriate historical instances of 
trauma, and in particular how Pynchon manages to do this in GR, 
without being guilty of exploiting the trauma in a way that
could be  considered offensive" on the table? ( I took your sentence 
because it's so much better than anything I could come up with ;-)"

Crownshaw does not say the Holocaust is central to GR. He titles his 
article, "Gravity's Rainbow:  Pynchon's Holocaust Allegory." I've 
already done the article injustice in my brief summary, so I'll point 
back to the article itself and let others read and evaluate it. In 
addition to being interesting in its own right, I point to 
Crownshaw's article as an example of Pynchon scholarship that takes 
seriously the Holocaust material in GR.

Why is this issue ( of how an artist might "legitimately appropriate 
historical instances of trauma, and in particular how Pynchon manages 
to do this in GR,  without being guilty of exploiting the trauma in a 
way that could be  considered offensive") on the table?  Because some 
P-listers have suggested that using the Holocaust as a symbol or 
metaphor would be offensive.  I cite Crownshaw's article because it 
seems to argue that GR is not offensive in its portrayals of the 
Holocaust, and it seems to argue that in GR Pynchon manages to write 
about the Holocaust without doing injustice to the original victims 
of that trauma.

If, as I think you are, a reader is willing to consider Pynchon's 
life experience in a reading of GR (or any of his fictions), I agree 
that there are plenty of reasons to believe that Pynchon's experience 
led him to write about the Holocaust -- among many other topics -- in 
GR.  Beyond the influences you mention, I find it difficult to 
imagine that Pynchon could grow up during WWII without being 
tremendously affected by the official version of the War that he 
received, and without being tremendously affected yet again when he 
began to learn how that official version might be at odds with what 
actually was going on in the War.  Given the way that the Holocaust 
has colored intellectual and artistic work over the past 60 years, I 
personally find it difficult to imagine that an artist of Pynchon's 
ability and political sensibilities would avoid grappling with, among 
many other things,  the Holocaust and the issues it represents, 
especially as he came to learn how companies and brand names that all 
Americans are taught to trust and love in fact profited from the 
suffering of Holocaust victims. More able critics than I can, and 
have, discussed how the Nazis and their project of genocide undercut 
the faith in progress that underlies globalization and the rise of 
corporate hegemony; how the perversion of science and technology 
created the death camps and undercuts faith in science and 
technology; how the tortured gnosticism of the Nazis undercuts faith 
in spirituality and organized religion; & etc.  Beyond his own 
personal experience and a desire to deal in his art with the issues 
of his era, there would seem to be artistic reasons for Pynchon to 
work the Holocaust into GR. -- many if not all readers of GR marvel 
at the ways in which Pynchon manages to weave these, and other, 
themes or motifs or whatever you want to call them, into a work of 
art with the power and beauty that GR offers.
-- 
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